Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
No Mercy #1
Image Comics
De Campi, McNeil & Lee
No Mercy is a comic about a group of teenagers, most of whom are getting ready to start college, and how they become stranded in a foreign country. The initial read through makes for a good introductory issue. However, upon a second read I began to see some of the flaws in the book. The comic has potential but the first issue is not as tight as it could have been to pull the reader into this tragedy. I mildly recommend this.
The comic tells an exciting story. A bunch of energetic teens arrive in another country from America eager to change the world. They trust in their lead, a local nun, and the bus as their transportation. A random accident lands them in a ravine and not in a good part of the country apparently. The pace of the comic is great. The book opens with a busy few pages as the characters are switching transportation while buzzing like bees among each other. Then the book slows down a touch as a couple of characters are isolated. Finally, the group is thrown into a terrible situation with a couple of graphic scenes.
The high point of the comic is the dialogue. The comic captures the youthful interactions and the personality stereotypes. The comic has the sister that takes abuse from her brother. It has the guy that looks like a jock but isn't. It has the know-it-all, gas-bag guy doing anything to pick up girls. It's a fun set of characters and their dialogue comes close to that of teens from just about any era. The use of their phones helps to bring this into modern times though. This technique to setup the characters during the first few pages is executed to near perfection.
The problem with the book is the inside cover page shows a rundown of the characters. However, the list isn't complete and it isn't colored. This makes picking them out throughout the issue challenging. Compounding this is that some characters appear to die in the end but based on the layout of the book, they appear to be non-essential extras. I wasn't a fan of this as I felt the book should have had a tighter control on the character count based on the detailed rundown in the front of the book. The reader should have known each character on that bus. The deaths are meaningless otherwise. If they are characters from the front of the comic book then it wasn't made clear making their deaths kind of a waste. If they aren't dead at all then we have a problem with the art and story marrying up.
The artwork is very solid. The book has a fun vibe, which is not at all what I expected, knowing this was a grim book. However, the characters thrown around in the bus at the back half of the book creates some visuals that don't line up with the story. The bus dropped an awful long way. Based on the fall and the scattering of characters the reader is led to believe some are dead. Or are they? I liked the artwork a lot but I'm confused with the crash scene and the art must take some of the flack for the confusion.
No Mercy has the potential to be a fantastic story. It's Americans in a place that is hostile, probably towards Americans as well as locals. They are kids that appear totally clueless and they are led by a nun. This has the makings to be a classic. However, the first issue spread the characters too thinly and left me cold as to the ones that are left in the end. I'm looking forward to seeing where this is all headed though. I recommend giving this a look.
3 out of 5 Geek Goggles
